Please Critique

[1ADAM12]

Camera: P&S Fuji Film set on Auto mode.

I am pretty sure this first photo is of Dix Mountain taken from LWJ but I really like how the branch in the foreground is blurry and the rest of the picture is focused. What do you think?





This picture is of a Purple Trillium set on my MACRO setting.

 

[Mark Schaefer]

I like the trillium a lot. It is very nicely exposed. The composition is a little central, but that often makes focusing a P&S camera easier. I might crop the bottom and both sides to fill the frame with the flower and to eliminate the few distractions in the background. The composition would still be central after the crop, but I think it is OK with this subject.

I am not a fan of the out of focus branch in the center of the photo. I believe it is more of a distraction then a contributor to the feeling of depth. It would be more acceptable as part of a frame surrounding a distant mountain view.

 

[Grumpy]

I second Mark's comments.

The trillium is nice, and could be strengthened by cropping, as noted.

There is more that bothers me about the mountain view than the out-of-focus branch in the foreground. I have a problem with the whole tangle of branches in the foreground, which here serve less as a frame than act to create some confusion as to what the photo is "about."

I suspect it is an illustration, in its way, of how we often see neighboring mountains through the dense growth high on the side of the mountain we're on. In this case, I'd suggest shooting from a slightly higher angle to give us more of the neighboring mountain. That would push the scrubby growth at the bottom of the frame farther down, to act more like a frame. And be very careful to avoid including starkly out-of-focus elements, like the branch, in the foreground.

G.

 

[1ADAM12]

Thanks guys! I really liked the way the out of focus branch added to the picture Oh well we all have different tastes but you two take awesome pictures so I will learn from the constructive you just gave me

Thanks again,
Adam

 

[Raymond]

My first-ever entry in a camera club competition had a big blurry branch across it, and I thought it might be artistic, but the judge HATED it.

She did give me a first place on my next slide, however; a picture of a barn that is now long, long gone, so that helped me feel better.

Anyway, I think your branch would have to be a lot blurrier than what it is there, and not right across the middle, to get away with it. The eye tends to be drawn to things like that, and it’s usually not to the photograph’s advantage. I think a judge would say that your picture is a ‘‘record’’ shot; a record that you were there, but not competition-worthy.

It can be tough to get away from the branches, though, unless you’re carrying an ax.

When I heard Galen Rowell speak years ago, he made the point that, ‘‘if you have remarkable light, you may have a remarkable photograph.’’ Emphasis on ‘‘may.’’ Photographs are more about the lighting than the subject, but I fully understand that most of us aren’t going to hang around waiting all day for the lighting to be perfect. We’re going to take the picture and be on our merry way. That’s why you and I aren’t working for the National Geographic.